Tucker Carlson, however, was not so sure. On January 27th, "he raised the notion of a China 'travel ban' with Fox medical analyst, Dr. Marc Siegel, who endorsed the idea and said the situation in Wuhan was terrifying. Later in the week Siegel came back and did a Coronavirus 101 tutorial for the audience."
One of the banners on Tucker Carlson Tonight read "TIME TO STOP FLIGHTS FROM CHINA," something Trump did just four days later, on March 31st.
But, the China ban was full of holes. Worse, it did nothing to stop the virus from coming in to the U.S. from Europe. New York City would soon be ravaged by spreaders from Europe. Nevertheless, "Trump boasted to Hannity that "we pretty much shut it down."
"On February 10 he told Trish Regan, the 8 p.m. host on Fox Business, that he believed China would 'have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to."
On February 23, White House trade advisor, Peter Navarro appeared on Fox with Maria Bartiromo. He assured her that "face masks, protective gear, and diagnostics were all being procured in 'Trump time.'" He also told her and her audience that a vaccine was possible in "half the time it normally takes." He further reassured her that the "American economy is extremely strong" and not particularly vulnerable to what happens in China." Every assurance proved to be false.
What he told Fox viewers, however, was virtually the opposite of what he warned his White House colleagues that very same day. His memo to them said, "There is an increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1-2 million souls."
The public heard no such alarms from Trump or Fox News. Instead, Fox's "overarching storyline" was, "The damn Democrats were unfairly using the virus as a cudgel against Trump." On February 28th, Trump told a rally in South Carolina, "This is their new hoax."
On March 9th, Trump tweeted, "So last year 37,000 American died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!"
Little did our mentally ill and lying president suspect that, a few weeks later, he would be forced to shut down the country and, thereby, plunge the economy into a deep depression. Little did he realize that his subsequent reckless push to reopen the economy would lead to some 6,300,000 cases of the coronavirus in the U. S., and more than 190,000 deaths from it by September 8th.
An appropriate gauge of Trump's mishandling of the virus is this: While the U. S. makes up but a little more than 4% of the world's population, it owns 22% of its deaths. Leaders of many other countries have done a much better job of containing the virus.
On March 9th, Tucker Carlson rebuked Trump without mentioning his name: "People you trust, people you probably voted for, have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem." One hour later, however, Sean Hannity denounced media "hysteria." "This is scaring the living hell out of people - I see it, again, as like, lets bludgeon Trump with this new hoax."
But, look at the aforementioned numbers for September 8th, and ask yourself, "Who really was perpetrating a hoax?"
On that same day, Trish Regan asserted that coronavirus warnings from Democrats were "yet another attempt to impeach the president." Ultimately, that statement would get her canned.
Mr. Stelter informs us that, in March "scores of Americans wrote to the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] "and argued that the network had blood on its hands.[For example] Hannity 'has misled his elderly viewers on the risk of pandemic virus. They are most at risk,' one Kansas City resident wrote. [Another wrote] 'My mother, who is 94 years old, believes that the virus threat is very overstated because Fox News and Sean Hannity say so.'"
The clowns at Fox News, especially Laura Ingraham, touted the wonders of hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment. "By March 31, the drug had been mentioned more than five hundred times on Fox's airwaves." And although some voices at Fox warned their cult against injecting strong light or disinfectants into their bodies, the prime time voices totally ignored Trump's flagrantly ignorant musings about such potential remedies.
Because Stelter's reporting or his book about Fox News appears to extend only to the end of March, we have no idea what the Fox cult made of Trump's ridiculous thoughts about injecting strong light or disinfectant into the body. We do know, however, that, in general, Fox News viewers stupidly "treated Trump's televised briefings as a source of news" For example, at the Democratic National Convention, "Kristin Urquiza said her father contracted the virus after listening to Trump dismiss the severity of the crisis. He went to a karaoke bar with friends and subsequently died" (Bob Brigham, Salon, August 18, 2020)
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